Going to California...one last time

Yesterday evening I arrived back in Southern California. My luggage didn’t.

According to the very nice lady at John Wayne’s baggage services (who literally paged me the moment I reached the lower level carousel area), my bag was “following” me. I missed my Minneapolis connection to Orange County because of a delay in Cedar Rapids, and keeping my luggage and I together when rebooking was apparently a tall task. While Delta held a seat for me on the 5:10 to OC, it sent my bag to Salt Lake City.

I expected something to be awry when I landed in SoCal and wasn’t at all upset given the odd circumstances. (My bag arrived today, as promised, so the problem worked itself out.) Frankly, the odd delay and luggage snafu was perfect to a T: it typified my experiences returning to and from Iowa while living on the west coast. Nothing less (or better, in this case) would do for my last trip back to California.

Curious to know how many times I’ve flown to the heartland since leaving in 2006, I did a finger count during the final approach to SNA. I flew back nine times: four times for the winter holidays, twice for weddings, once in the fall for the hell of it, once as a surprise birthday present for my dad, and most recently for my parents’ anniversary.

Nine trips seem like a lot, but it hasn’t felt that way. Once home, time slips by. In the big picture of my California adventure, I think of my visits back to Iowa City as momentary slivers, like thin marks highlighting significant events on a long textbook timeline. I traveled back to Iowa more than my parents when they lived out here, and more, I’m sure, than the average Midwest transplant. My roots obviously didn’t like SoCal’s arid desert soil, so I needed to return to my native land as often as possible for mental, social, cultural, environmental, and spiritual sustenance. Those therapeutic and nurturing visits were fleeting at best.

Like mom suggested, I should have joined a frequent flyer club.

Unpredictability and air travel go hand-in-hand. Here are some of the quirky and unfortunate delays, major and minor, I remember experiencing on the flights home (and they always happened on the trip to Iowa; yesterday’s tangle was only the second Cali-bound nuisance):

-In December ’07, my flight to CR was canceled due to fog, so I flew to Chicago and hitched a ride to IC with two borderline insane Marines (I got my luggage three days later after it was driven by truck from Dallas).

-Multiple CR connections were delayed because the stewards or pilots were en route on another plane.

-In July ’09, my CR bound flight was grounded due to a line of storms along the Minnesota-Iowa border, so we sat in the plane (still at the gate!) for 40 minutes. I was sitting next to a woman who had been traveling (and hadn’t bathed) for an entire day. She smelled like my armpits after a run.

-In December ’09, my CR connection was delayed for about 15 minutes because the ground crew couldn’t detach the pushcart from the front wheel.

-The first Cali-bound nuisance happened in either January ’07 or ’08. A woman on my CR flight to Chicago, who was continuing to India, misplaced her passport somewhere while checking in. The flight was held for 20 minutes while she and airport officials searched. It was a very nice gesture, but I stewed in my seat, worrying about making my OC connection. Someone found her passport, and I made my next flight.

The major nuisance happened when flying back to surprise my dad for his 60th birthday. While booking the trip I remember thinking, “If I get stuck somewhere, it’s all my fault. It’s because I want to get stuck.” I passed it off as superstition, but realized the thought’s prophetic clarity when the stewardess on the DFW flight announced, “it is thunder snowing in Dallas.” As the plane landed, the precipitation hitting the window next to my seat was thick water. During the time it took to taxi to the gate, the thick water turned to sleet and then huge white snowflakes. I watched an inch accumulate we waited for a crew to guide the plane into the gate and attach the jet bridge. We waited 30 minutes. I deplaned into transit hell. All the flights on the arrival/departure boards were listed as CANCELED. I didn’t sit for the next six hours; I ran from gate to gate to stand in unmoving lines. I boarded a flight to Des Moines, planning to drive a rental car to IC, but was kicked off when the flight was found to be overweight. I secured a seat on an early flight to CR, and that’s when the long sleepover in DFW began. I rode the inter-terminal tram endlessly and walked the empty terminals to kill time. I got a little shut-eye in a booth at a TGIFriday’s. In the morning, the flight to CR was delayed because — surprise surprise — the stewardess was arriving on another flight.

Good times. I learned never to fly without my glasses (contacts get insanely irritating after I’ve worn them for about 20 hours) and to avoid flying American and through Dallas.

All airlines and airports have bad days, and I just happened to catch American and Dallas on a few of theirs. I just had bad luck with both, so I’ve since opted to fly Northwest/Delta through Minneapolis. The folks at MSP strive to provide the best airport experience in the Midwest, and I say they’re more than successful. It is hands down the best airport I’ve been to, and a girl-watching bonanza to boot. I loved arriving from Orange County and seeing all those cute Midwest chicks — natural, wholesome, down to earth yet individually sophisticated, and brunette — on my walk to puddle-jumper Terminal A. Only for the Minnesota cuties — as Kerouac thought the prettiest girls were in Des Moines, I think they’re in the Twin Cities — will I miss flying back to the Midwest.

Needless to say, I’m done flying for a while. Yesterday, while waiting in CR for my delayed Twin Cities flight, I thought, “The next time I’ll be here will either be to pick someone up or leave to go somewhere and come back.” For the foreseeable future, Cedar Rapids will no longer be a far-off destination but a home port to return to after a trip elsewhere.

I’ve made up my mind to make a new start. I’m done going to California.

(The pic accompanying this post was taken over Denver on my flight back to SoCal in September ’08. That return to the Midwest was probably my favorite.)